Blake joins the call, and Charlie updates them both on our situation and what Giovanni and his men are doing. “So we need someone to come over here now so we can save what is here.”
“There’s no one to send,” Emerson says. “Jace, Ledger, and Miles are all out of the country. I don’t even think Mom is back yet. I could come, but I’m still at work, and it would take at least twenty minutes. Everyone else here has already gone home.”
“And I might need you there,” Charlie says.
“I’m already driving,” Blake says, “and I’m fifteen minutes away, tops.”
“Do you want me to call local law enforcement or the FBI to get someone there more quickly?” Emerson asks.
That sounds good to me, but Charlie says, “Andhave them come in all noisy and flashy, guns blazing? They’d be able to recover the remaining artifacts, but Giovanni will be in the wind.”
“True,” Emerson says. “Which means it has to be you.”
“Me?” Charlie’s voice comes out as a squeak. I reach out and give her shoulder a squeeze. “What do I even do? And how can you guide me through this when I can’t even step away from the far end of the tunnel?”
“Even if you had reception,” Emerson says, “I’m not sure Icouldlead you through it. There’s a reason why I’m an analyst and not a tech op—when I need to figure something out, I shut out the world and focus. I usually get time to think. I don’t have to give an answer right in the middle of stressful things. I have no idea how you do what you do.
“But Charlie, youdoknow what to do. Right in the heat of things, you know. You just need to trust your instincts. You knew Giovanni was committing crimes before anyone else had the slightest clue. Trust yourself. If Jace was the one down there, and you had him on comms and cameras, what would you tell him to do right now?”
Charlie visibly calms. “I’d tell him to get photographic evidence of everything, making sure to put it all exactly back as it was, then to zip tie himself back up before Giovanni returns. Then I wouldwatch street cameras for Giovanni to come back, and I’d send in the cavalry as soon as he was back in the tunnel.” She lets out a long exhale. “I wish I could have you go to my computer and show you how to bring up the cameras on the street in front of the restaurant so you could watch for Giovanni, but it’d take too long.”
“I can tell you when he comes,” Blake says. “Heidi and I will head to the restaurant, find the hatch, and then keep an eye out for him. When we see him, I’ll call you, Emerson, so you’ll know to send in the noisy, flashy suits with blazing guns.”
“That’s perfect!” Charlie says. “Tell them to go into The Shadowridge, too, so he doesn’t escape from that direction. Those pictures I texted are of a maintenance closet backstage, near the dressing rooms. It’s locked from down here.”
“Got it,” Emerson says.
“And Charlie, if anything happens to you…” Blake adds.
“I know. You’ll have even more bitterness toward the CSA than you do right now. Don’t worry. We’ll be careful.”
Charlie ends the call, and we both run back to the table that Man Bun had been working at. I take a picture of how everything is on the table, and then I start opening folders, and Charlie starts taking pictures as I flip to each page, holding my flashlight on them so she’ll get a good image. It looks like thesepapers show where every piece has gone. Hopefully, it’ll mean they can get them all back.
When we finish, we look at the picture on my phone and get the table back the way it was, and then we do the same to the artifacts. We’re working so fast our hands are shaking from all the adrenaline. We hear a sound at the far end of the tunnel, so we turn off our phones’ flashlights and put them in our pockets. Charlie quickly grabs two zip ties, and we sit at the base of the shelving just like we were.
“Put your hands like this,” Charlie says, holding her fists out and pressed together, palms down. So I put my fists like that on the other side of the bar, and she zip ties me. “If they check your bands, turn your hands like that again, and they’ll feel tight.” Then she puts a zip tie around the same bar, keeping it loose, then slips her hands into it.
We’ve still got adrenaline coursing through us, so we’re breathing heavily, but hopefully Giovanni will just interpret it as fear. “You are amazing,” I whisper to Charlie. “You know that, right?”
She gives me a smile that’s beautiful in the dim glow of the lamp. She looks like she’s pretty proud of herself, and I’m proud of her, too.
We see Giovanni walking in the tunnel back toward us first. It’s maybe a minute later before Man Bun joins him. As soon as Giovanni is tous, Charlie says in that same trembling voice that she’d used before, “Thank you for leaving the light on for me.”
He just grunts a response, and he and Man Bun start packing up the rest of the artifacts.
Charlie turns her head to me, mouths,They’re going too fast. We need to stall them.
Now that’s something I can do. I have plenty of questions I’ve been dying to ask Giovanni.
CHAPTER 36
DISTRACT AND CONQUER
CHARLIE
Giovanni had been gone for long enough that I’m sure Blake found his way into the Lantern House restaurant, hopefully found the hatch, saw Giovanni return, and notified Emerson. I’m sure Emerson already had the FBI, or at least local law enforcement, on standby, ready to storm in. But still, it takes a bit to get them from wherever they were to be in place, ready to capture Giovanni and Man Bun Menace when they leave.
Luckily, I am tied up next to a man who knows just how to stall Giovanni.
